The present invention relates to a machine for filling containers with liquid or particulate material.
For this purpose, filling machines are used comprising a carousel conveyor rotating continuously about an axis; a number of feed devices for supplying the fill material, and which are carried by the conveyor, arranged about the rotation axis of the conveyor, and located at respective loading stations; and a supporting and weighing unit carried by the conveyor to support a number of empty containers, each located at a respective loading station to receive the fill material from a respective feed device.
Filling or the containers is controlled by a control device off the conveyor and of xe2x80x9cMaster-Multislavexe2x80x9d circuit architecture, i.e. comprising a main control unit (xe2x80x9cmasterxe2x80x9d) and a number of satellite control units (xe2x80x9cslavesxe2x80x9d), wherein the slave control units are connected to the supporting and weighing unit by sliding contacts, provide solely for acquiring electric weight signals generated by the supporting and weighing unit and indicating the weight of the containers being filled, and are controlled by the master unit, which is typically defined by a personal computer and provides for acquiring and processing the weight signals, and controlling the feed devices to cut off supply of the product to the containers when the weight of the containers reaches a preset threshold value corresponding to the amount of product with which the containers are to be filled.
Though widely used, xe2x80x9cMaster-Multislavexe2x80x9d control architecture, in this type of application, has various drawbacks whereby not all its advantages are adequately exploited. More specifically, being responsible for overall processing of the feed device weight and control signals, the master unit, on the one hand, constitutes a fill control xe2x80x9cbottleneckxe2x80x9d, and, on the other, limits the extent to which the output of the machine can be increased, by inevitably limiting the maximum number of feed devices installable, maximum fill speed of the container, and maximum rotation speed of the conveyor.
GB2017971 discloses a filling machine comprising a carousel conveyor rotating continuously about an axis, and a number of feed devices for supplying the fill material, and which are carried by the conveyor, arranged about the rotation axis of the conveyor, and provided with relevant electrical weighing cells. The weight of each container located in a relevant feed device is monitored by the relevant electrical weighing cell before and whilst it is being loaded with a liquid product. A preselector unit stores the weight of product required to be loaded, and a computing device is arranged to store the weight of each container, initiate loading of the product into the container and determine the instantaneous weight of product in the container and stop the loading when it determines that substantially the preset weight has been loaded. In particular, a relevant computing device is provided for each feed device; i.e. each electrical weighing cell works always with its own computing device, which comprises an analogue-digital converter circuit, a store, a substracting unit, and a comparator unit. All the computing devices are arranged in a control unit, which is locate in a fixed position over the carousel conveyor.
That is, besides providing additional loading stations and respective feed devices and/or increasing conveyor rotation and container fill speed, any increase in machine output would also mean substituting and programming a master unit of much higher processing capacity.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a container filling machine designed to eliminate the aforementioned drawbacks of the known state of the art.
According to the present invention, there is provided a machine for filling containers with liquid or particulate material, the machine comprising a carousel conveyor rotating continuously about an axis, a number of feed devices for supplying the material, and which are carried by the carousel conveyor, are arranged about the axis, and are located at respective loading stations, supporting and weighing means carried by the carousel conveyor to support and weigh a number of said containers, each located at a respective said loading station to receive the material from a respective said feed device, and electronic control means to control the filling of the containers and comprising a plurality of control units, each of which is connected to a number of relevant supporting and weighing means and is able to independently control a number of relevant feed devices; the machine being characterized in that the control units are carried by the carousel conveyor and in that the electronic control means comprise a supervisor for supervising the filling of the containers, which is stationary, is located outside the carousel conveyor and communicates with the control units by means of communicating means.